How Google Grows...and Grows...and Grows

orangerobot writes "The latest issue of Fast Company has an article about how Google has managed to survive beyond its peers and develop a culture of openness and innovation. The article also mentions Google memes and spin-offs such as: Googlewhack, Googlebombing, Googleshare, Googlism and Google Smackdown."

Comments

That's because it works

[coolmacdude]

When was the last time anyone visited another search engine? I can't remember when I did.

Re:That's because it works

[ergo98]

Indeed. Are we at the point yet where we declare Google a monopoly and start rooting for a competing search engine just because?

Seriously, though, apart from the barriers to entry (namely having the computing power, storage, and bandwidth to spider the entire web) there are a wide range of ways that Google could be bested. The only reason they weren't before is that the major competitors saw search engines as a money losing proposition, and started throwing all their money behind duplicating Yahoo, making online communities, auctions, etc.

Re:That's because it works

[John_Renne]

Google is one of the finest search-engines around but I use several different search-engines quit often. There's Kartoo that has great looks and vivisimo that has the abillity to group results.

Re:That's because it works

[garcia]

no. are they forcing us to use it? is Google installed on ALL new computers without the option of having another?

there is two reasons I use Google:

1. On my p133 laptop w/Win98 Google loads faster than any other page (I never realized how slow a P133 was until I waited for /. to load as the homepage).

2. It fucking works. Not in the way that Windows "works". It just works. I type in whatever I am looking for (phone numbers, addresses, names, random things) and it comes up w/what I wanted w/o having to search 10000000's of results.

It's not a monopoly, it's a good product.

SIMPLICITY

[_PimpDaddy7_]

Google just seems to "get it".

They took a simple idea and kept it simple, yet making it extremely powerful.

Re:SIMPLICITY

[Anonymous Coward]

Much like your post.

A triumph for google is a triumph for ethics.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is interesting to note that Google has been the only major coroporation to be successful while employing an 'ethical' policy. Unlike other search engines their page ranking system is 110% fair as they do not accept 'payments' (read bribes)to increasing ranking scores, they have not adopted widespread advertising (although most people would be happier if they had never allowed advertising on the site at all), and they have released all their search algorithms to the scientific community which has been a boon to people reaearching in Mathmatics/Computer Science.

Finally they used Linux when most of the other web businesses were running Windows. Their example has shown that a business running linux can suceed, even though it can be more difficult than running windows.

Re:A triumph for google is a triumph for ethics.

[shish]

> and they have released all their search algorithms to the scientific community

but patented them >:-(

> although most people would be happier if they had never allowed advertising on the site at all

I've found that google is the only site ever that actually gives useful on-topic ads, and thus the only ads I ever follow are google ones

When your company name becomes a verb...

[path_man]

When your company name becomes a verb (google): to search for something; I'm going to google for that computer part you know that you're onto something.

Google has survived the dot.com bubble burst because they offer a great service that people want. The natural thing for most companies (brick and mortar or otherwise) is to spin-off and leverage the successful business model into something that will grow their company.

It's pretty self-explanatory

[shayborg]

Any simple search engine that has become basically a cultural icon has to be special. You don't search for anything any more, you google for it.

Google was a good search engine in the beginning. It gained popularity, which made it a better search engine, which let it gain more popularity, which made it an even better search engine, ad infinitum.

It's not an exaggeration to claim that, right now, Google has earned itself the enviable position of becoming the first (at least nearly) definitive search engine.

-- shayborg

Re:didn't mention google's legal goons, though

[dissy]

> Funny that the article didn't mention the fact that Google's lawyers recently
> asked [linguistlist.org] Paul McFedries to remove the word 'google' from his
> excellent wordspy [wordspy.com] lexicon. A company that 'gets it' indeed.

Erm, thats odd, because that never happened. Did you just make that up on the spot or did it take you a while to prepare?

Google asked them to change their definition of 'google' from "To search for something" to "To search for something using the google search engine"

But they never once _DEMANDED_ that they remove the word google.

The wordspy.com listing was clearly incorrect.
Google simply corrected them.

So no its not too funny that the article didnt mention lies and FUD. Its a refreshing change actually.

What I _do_ find funny is you even link right to the article that proves me right and your own statements wrong! Did you even read it?

Direct quote from the article you linked:
> we want to make sure that when people use "Google," they are referring
> to the services our company provides and not to Internet searching
> in general.

The email then ends with:
> We ask that you help us to protect our brand by deleting the definition of
> "google" found at wordspy.com or revising it to take into account the
> trademark status of Google.

Hell, even keeping the clearly wrong and incorrect definition would be OK with google if they simply added a (TM) mark after the word Google from how their email reads!

No

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I be a slashdot editor now?

Not a single misspelling in your post. Sorry.

Why Google is successful, really

[Animats]

Fast Company doesn't get it. Google is successful because they live within their means. They started as a low-cost operation, and they didn't pour money into "expansion" until they had actual revenue to cover it. Compare, say, VA Linux, with that huge IPO for a dinky company.

Stock market hype types keep talking about Google "going public". They're more likely to go private; the founders may buy out the venture capitalists.